Philosophy Now Forum

attofishpi wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 10:47 am Apparantly the skin colour matters

Yep. Apparently. That seems to be the basis upon which the colonising Europeans mistreated indigenous Australians. Etc etc.

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 10:35 am

attofishpi wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 10:29 am

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 10:25 am

Indian?

Wot?

I wouldn't have picked that from your photo, that's all

Yah. Apparantly the skin colour matters ...and that is the point I am making to Harry and seeds.

That THEY are being racist, that racism works in both directions and lefty fucking twats like these are only amplifying an issue that the rest of us no longer subscribe to...SO FUCK OFF U LEFTY RACISTS ......it's really that simple.

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 10:51 am

attofishpi wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 10:47 am Apparantly the skin colour matters

Yep. Apparently. That seems to be the basis upon which the colonising Europeans mistreated indigenous Australians. Etc etc.

Are you really that fucking stupid?

According to Harry and his racism schedule, ...IF the Aborigines were ""WHITE"" then they would not have been mistreated by Europeans.

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 10:51 am

attofishpi wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 10:47 am Apparantly the skin colour matters

Yep. Apparently. That seems to be the basis upon which the colonising Europeans mistreated indigenous Australians. Etc etc.

It was actually a penal colony, so mostly English I would have thought. The English persecuted everyone, on the full colour spectrum, even transparent people..

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 11:22 am

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 10:51 am

attofishpi wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 10:47 am Apparantly the skin colour matters

Yep. Apparently. That seems to be the basis upon which the colonising Europeans mistreated indigenous Australians. Etc etc.

It was actually a penal colony, so mostly English I would have thought. The English persecuted everyone, on the full colour spectrum, even transparent people..

That is true of the way the English treated the Boers in South Africa, allegedly as bad as Hitler's concentration camps.
An atypical physical appearance ,either natural or deliberately contrived, is often taken to be a sign of ingroups and outgroups. Not long ago simple people were sometimes actually afraid of a person who in their limited experience looked different. However this was not always the case . When the first English settlers arrived in America they were useless at getting themselves fed among the virgin forests , and the local people who had not previously seen such odd people, helped them to survive. The local indigenous people must have had very strong laws of hospitality.

Belinda wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 12:07 pm

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 11:22 am

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 10:51 am

Yep. Apparently. That seems to be the basis upon which the colonising Europeans mistreated indigenous Australians. Etc etc.

It was actually a penal colony, so mostly English I would have thought. The English persecuted everyone, on the full colour spectrum, even transparent people..

That is true of the way the English treated the Boers in South Africa, allegedly as bad as Hitler's concentration camps.
An atypical physical appearance ,either natural or deliberately contrived, is often taken to be a sign of ingroups and outgroups. Not long ago simple people were sometimes actually afraid of a person who in their limited experience looked different. However this was not always the case . When the first English settlers arrived in America they were useless at getting themselves fed among the virgin forests , and the local people who had not previously seen such odd people, helped them to survive. The local indigenous people must have had very strong laws of hospitality.

And it would be hard to beat the way the English treated the Irish. Starved them out of their own country and populated it with English and Scots to undermine and outnumber the indigenous people. That's why 'Northern Ireland' exists. Deliberate genocide.

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 12:13 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 12:07 pm

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 11:22 am

It was actually a penal colony, so mostly English I would have thought. The English persecuted everyone, on the full colour spectrum, even transparent people..

That is true of the way the English treated the Boers in South Africa, allegedly as bad as Hitler's concentration camps.
An atypical physical appearance ,either natural or deliberately contrived, is often taken to be a sign of ingroups and outgroups. Not long ago simple people were sometimes actually afraid of a person who in their limited experience looked different. However this was not always the case . When the first English settlers arrived in America they were useless at getting themselves fed among the virgin forests , and the local people who had not previously seen such odd people, helped them to survive. The local indigenous people must have had very strong laws of hospitality.

And it would be hard to beat the way the English treated the Irish. Starved them out of their own country and populated it with English and Scots to undermine and outnumber the indigenous people. That's why 'Northern Ireland' exists. Deliberate genocide.

True. And also true is politicians to get power for themselves use people's fears. The native Irish were to be used by Cromwell as compliant underlings.

Today we see see similar tactics by right wing politicians to make all foreign immigrants seem like the main danger to the nation, when the real danger is Right wing efforts to make all of us compliant with the greed of the elite political class.

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 5:11 amThat doesn't answer my question, and, moreover it assumes not only that land theft after land theft after land theft - into the indeterminate past - on all lands is the reality, but also that land theft is thereby justified. It isn't.

So, I ask you again: why do you preference the view of the thief over that of the thieved-from in determining the "unrevised" history of land theft?

In order to examine the issue and the problem that, according to my determination, has you in its grip, I have to try to explain where it originates. In respect to that, and trying also to link this present turn in the conversation back toward the Christian theme, I notice a contrast between natural events, the events and occurrences in the natural world, and that of an imposed philosophy, one that enters from outside the System itself. So as I have said in other places it seems to me that you are operating with the essence of a Christian view. Therefore a previous observation of mine seems valid: you (the ideas that you hold to and which hold on to you) have been informed at a profound level with an essentially Christian idealism. But not just you of course, rather an entire segment of people who think (and see) like you. How shall I describe those who like you impose their moral ideologies on themselves, on the way they see and interpret history, and their activism in the present? The catch-all term is 'the Woke' is it not? So what I notice, here in this present evolution of the conversation in this thread, that I now will have to come to terms with the Woke. I will have to devote time to examining what seems to me a really weird manifestation, and bending, and twisting, of a derivative of Christian idealism.

But then I have to state, as a sort of preamble, that I do not, and cannot, subscribe to the ethical system that informs you. This also means that I cannot subscribe, and this is so at a fundamental level, to the general gist of the Christian ethical system. I can respect elements within the ethical imperatives of that system (and I do) but I find that it has become, for me, unreal -- and this is why I use this word and similar words to describe your ethical system. Unreal, based not in *reality* or the way things are and will always be but in *imposed phantasies* which also have links to neurotic ideas. I have to introduce the psychological element here, it is unavoidable: neurotic: adjective: unstable, nervous, disturbed, anxious, abnormal, obsessive, compulsive, manic, unhealthy, hyper (informal), twitchy (informal), overwrought, maladjusted.

And with that I have to them sharpen my statement, the one that is forming, into something more solid, more concrete: this sort of thinking is bad thinking. If I were to adopt it I feel I would be taking on a sickness. These are not ideas, or existential attitudes, that one can build with. They are, and I say ultimately, the ideas of a suicide. And in this sense this is what I discern within Christian philosophy: I will suicide myself here and now, in this plane, for that glorious life to come on another visualized or hallucinated realm of life where there are no existential problems.

It is a sick view and I can do nothing else but reject it. I am not sure if you will go along with me as I draw a parallel between your existential ideology which comes through you with a palpable moralizing tone. Your expressions are thick with acute moralizing tones. You are self-certain. And your ideas become totalized through the moralizing attitude. You, Harry, stand in judgment of the World! And the world had better listen and pay heed. I hope that you will grasp that when I refer to *you* I am referring to a great deal more than you. These are common ideas and attitudes and, I also notice, they seem to capture children and the very young. Thus idealism, and totalizing idealism, are attractive and seductive enticements for inexperienced people, people who live within protecting systems, and who take on a peculiar orientation for odd purposes.

There's also a deep irony that your observation applies so deliciously to yourself: although you endorse the European invasion and occupation of the lands of native Americans, you complain loudly when you perceive that, demographically, the same thing is now happening to "your" people on those lands.

Yet according to your views, if they were non-contradictory, you should rally to the defense of those who say they are being 'displaced' and 'replaced'. And though I assume you would have something of a defensive nature to say for those who exclaim that they fear being *replaced* (for example in response to the articulated position of Renaud Camus) what you might not be able to take into consideration is the entire element of 'war against whiteness'. So were you to google-search 'replacement theory' right now you would, through the designs of those who establish the algorithmic gates, find only very negative interpretations about the theory and about those who 'believe in' the theory and the reality that it pertains to.

So the psychology behind the idea-movement that undermines European accomplishment and which established *White people* as an enemy, and even more importantly the taking on of that attitude by white Europeans themselves -- it is that, quite precisely, that Bowden speaks about in his pointed talks.

The grammar of self-intolerance is what we have imposed and allowed others to impose upon us. Political correctness is a white European grammar which we've been taught and stumbled through the early phases of. And yet we've learned this grammar and the methodology that lies behind it very well, and we've learned it to such a degree that we can't have an incorrect thought now without a synapses or a spasm of guilt that associates with it and goes along with it. Every time we think of a self-affirmative statement it is undercut immediately by the idea that there is something wrong or something queasy or something quasi-genocidal or something not quite right or something morally ill about us if we have that thought...

So as I assume you are gathering, and I do not mean you any offense personally, that you provide for me an example of what happens to a man who really & truly embraces and integrates these destructive ideas into his own self. You become walking self-negation. Your very existence is under a shadow. Your central activity must be in *righting the wrong* but in fact this is quite impossible. Neurosis by definition. I am referring to ideas as they impinge on life-lived. I am not interested in any other level of diagnosis.

So when we examine, say, a nation where these ideas are pronounced, we see that these moral accusatory diatribes are used as weapons for other levels of power-play and power-assertion. The very structure in the case of the United States is attacked with a powerful, ideological acid which, just like in this case where I make efforts to resist you, those who are being subject to this Woke attack (I use the cartoon-conventional term with some trepidation) are powerless against the moral and ideological assault: as long as they are susceptible on the psychological plane to it! It is a disease therefore. And it must be overcome. And any man who is a carrier of the idea-disease must be exposed as such.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 4:11 am Also in your case (if you will permit a bolder statement without offense) you undermine your own right to be in the land you say was got through injustice.

Here is an excerpt from the post where you explain yourself in respect to this issue. I will comment on it below:

Harry writes: Since I've committed to a sincere and meaningful response, I affirm up front that the thought has occurred to me to emigrate to a country in which I am indigenous (as opposed to one in which I am associated with a colonialist occupying force). There are various personal reasons why that is impractical for the moment. More importantly, though, my position doesn't anyway demand it. That position is that the decision as to what we non-indigenous residents of colonised nations should do is up to their indigenous citizens. I don't simply assume that their choice would be: "Piss off back to where you came from, the lot of you". I think that a process of genuine consultation on the basis that indigenous citizens are the genuine sovereigns of this land ("Australia") needs to be undertaken, and I would respect the outcome of that process, even if it was "Go back to where you came from, whiteys".

In the meantime, the best I can do is to advocate, from where I am right now, for effective sovereignty to be returned to indigenous "Australians", and for their will to be respected.

You are not seeing what is really at stake and you are not taking the moral problem seriously enough. It does not matter what the indigenous decide or do not decide. You have the moral responsibility to, allow me to put it plainly, annihilate yourself. You have no right at all to remain there. So I could propose that you must take your moral imperative to an even further, a more true, honest and ultimate position: you must begin to clear the area of those who have, like parasites, overtaken the lands and the lives of those they stole from.

I am, of course, simply *pushing forward* the ideology you subscribe to to a point where it is seen as lunatic. The point though is to show, and I believe it fair, that the end result of your ideology is as I say self-annihilation. Yet those who have the strongest manifestation of this disease don't take that step. But they do turn against themselves on an inner level and delegitimize themselves through a strange psychological manoeuvre. Doing so, they relinquish their own power, and by relinquishing their own power they have no means of defense against those who wield the narratives that are rather common today.

So obviously what I am suggesting is a process of re-empowerment. You do not have to do this, obviously, and given your trajectory it seems doubtful that you would. But I have to do it and I want to do it!

That you seem serious in what you have written in the above-quoted paragraph is, in a way, shocking to me. But it also invites a mocking humor. Perhaps you can pass around flyers with survey questions.

"Hello. I am Harry, one of the invaders. I am sorry that I exist. I wonder if you'd be kind enough to a) allow me permission to remain and go on living or b) to get on the next plane back to where I came from. Also, and this might be a bit hard for you to decide, but Should I go on living? or should I, after signing over my belongings, put a bullet through my head? Finally, would you support the idea of me taking out as many of my fellow invaders before I off myself? Please be so kind to think it over. Whatever you decide, I promise to comply. Yours very truly, Invader Harry Baird."

[I am reminded of this scene for various reasons, I include it here for fun].

Allow me to return to this question:

Harry wrote: So, I ask you again: why do you preference the view of the thief over that of the thieved-from in determining the "unrevised" history of land theft?

In respect to, let's say, the establishment of South Africa (a convoluted history involving also war between two European peoples), my answer is I absolutely *support* (to use that tacky word) the establishment of the European colony in that area of southern Africa. In many instances their occupation involved displacement (of the Zulus for example) not annihilation. So 'life goes on' but under new and different terms. What was created by the South African (the original settlers, the Boers, the English) was something extraordinary and, in this sense, supplants whatever I might appreciate about primitive African culture (though I admit that there is not much in it that I value very much nor can *relate to*). I can certainly lament though the loss or destruction (or modification) of the cultures that did exist there.

In relation to the N American tribes I have often felt a more poignant sadness. For example I read a good deal about what is called The Ghost Dance Movement:

In 1869 or 1870, Tävibo, a Northern Paiute and first Ghost Dance prophet, preached that white people would disappear from the earth and dead Indians would return to enjoy a utopian life. He also claimed to communicate with the dead and taught followers to perform a ceremonial circular dance that contributed to the movement earning the Ghost Dance label. The movement spread through Nevada and to parts of California and Oregon but subsided after the prophecies failed to materialize. Another Paiute prophet, Wovoka, revived the movement in 1889. Rumored to be Tävibo's son, and certainly influenced by his teachings, Wovoka experienced a vision of the Supreme Being in 1889, after which he preached peaceful coexistence and a strong work ethic and taught ceremonial songs and dances to resurrect dead Indians. According to the vision, if Indians followed these practices, they would be reunited with the dead and whites would disappear. Indians who had already subscribed to the first Ghost Dance tended to reject Wovoka's version, but the second Ghost Dance found acceptance among Plains tribes as far east as the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.

For a people to see and experience their way of life simply wiped out because another people have come on the scene, produces melancholy doesn't it? That a culturally advanced European people came into contact with a primitive stone-age people and, it seems inevitable, brought an end to the life they lived is 'tragic' in the true sense of the world.

But even they have to get on with things.

How then does my attitude differ from yours? How is it that I can take the attitude that I do which, according to you, involves an immoral stance and position? That is the question, isn't it? Well the answer is that I have to *overcome* everything in your view that is inhibitive and self-destructive. I have to confront you (you in a plural form) but on the plane of psychology. I do not say that this is something simple. And I also do not say that it is not a fraught enterprise.

As with my confrontation with Immanuel Can I find I am in a similar position in regard to you! How odd that is when I think about it. I will not submit to his ideological demands (actual and implied) nor will I submit to yours. You are also -- please don't take this personally -- emblematic of an *enemy* I must also overcome.

The other part of this question -- we launched into this discussion through reference to South Africa where you still have relatives and where, as I said, there exists still a branch of my Danish ancestors [5-6 generations back] -- has to do also with a closer examination of the N American scene and, also, of Israel and its hitorically unprecedented reconquest of an abandoned land in modern times.

The entire conversation we have had here is of vital interest to me. If and especially when it is tied-in to what is going on around us now in the contemporary world.

seeds wrote: ↑Wed Nov 30, 2022 9:06 pmAgain, Alexis, look at the guy in the YouTube link I provided and tell me it's not a good thing to prevent him...

What I present to you, it would seem, is the admonition to begin to look at *what is going on around us* from a wider and perhaps a more removed perspective. So I counter your YouTube and raise you a BitChute!

I do not get the sense that you-people are fully understanding how the very serious runs headlong into the looney-tune; how people are so riled up, perhaps so overstimulated, but so fundamentally confused that they have to grab whatever anchors are available to them in a given moment. What is the origin and the root cause of the topsy-turvy surrounding us today? Where is it tending? How will this end?

Should I *take it seriously* or should I *laugh it off*?

Alexis Jacobi wrote (excerpt from his lengthy discussion):

What was created by the South African (the original settlers, the Boers, the English) was something extraordinary and, in this sense, supplants whatever I might appreciate about primitive African culture (though I admit that there is not much in it that I value very much nor can *relate to*). I can certainly lament though the loss or destruction (or modification) of the cultures that did exist there.

In the context of societies and their cultures, "primitive" is subjective evaluation and reactionary to boot.

Belinda wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 3:45 pm Alexis Jacobi wrote (excerpt from his lengthy discussion):

What was created by the South African (the original settlers, the Boers, the English) was something extraordinary and, in this sense, supplants whatever I might appreciate about primitive African culture (though I admit that there is not much in it that I value very much nor can *relate to*). I can certainly lament though the loss or destruction (or modification) of the cultures that did exist there.

In the context of societies and their cultures, "primitive" is subjective evaluation and reactionary to boot.

Very well then: I embrace my value-assessment and elevate my *subjective assessment* through an act of my will and decisiveness. And if this is reactionary I resolve to solidify my reaction with, at least, sound reasonings. And I am certain I can make an excellent case.

If it is my preference .. so be it. I will advocate for what is preferential from my perspective. I can, and I certainly have made efforts to, appreciate the so-called primitive and the barbarian (in the old sense of the word), but in the final analysis I don't really give much of a damn about the preservation of old stone age cultural forms. Yet I say this not without appreciation for some aspects of those forms. I used to attend Sioux sweat lodges and I have also lived with Indian groups (for limited periods of time) in the mountains of the Sierra Mazateca. I am not unfamiliar with different cultures nor am I condemning of them.

You *push* me to the point that I must take. I favor the cultures that melded to become European South Africa by my choice and by my decisiveness. It is from this position that I would then make a larger defense of that culture and, simultaneously, express regret that it is undergoing a dis-favorable transformation as a result of the imposition of liberal values'. Is there an alternative? There does not appear to be one. Was there an alternative that could have resulted in something resmbling 'justice'? (Or another form of it?) I am uncertain.

What does this mean, then, for my position in relation to my present? My culture. My nation? What I would say is mine and belongs to me? That is of course the central question. So I have contextualized this abstract conversation down to a ground level. It always resolves to issues of power it seems to me. One way or another.

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 2:41 am

iambiguous wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 7:13 pm

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 4:19 amI do acknowledge the problem that underlies all of this: even if there are objective values, it is up to individual subjects to recognise as much, which they might not, instead mistakenly presenting their own subjective - and objectively false - values as truly objective, and mistakenly doing so zealously and fanatically.

At least, that's how I put it in this context.

But, from my frame of mind, that is still largely a "general description intellectual contraption" assessment. What particular "individual subjects" given what particular set of circumstances, given what particular alleged "objective values"?

As I've repeated multiple times to IC recently, I've sufficiently expressed my arguments for the grounding of objective morality already in my first spate of posting to this forum quite a few years back, so I won't get into it again here with you.

Okay, but IC is himself another moral objectivist. His "transcending font" being the Christian God. So basically in exchanges between the two of you, you both share in the belief that objective morality can be defended...just given different "comforting and consoling" frames of mind anchored to different foundations? For some God. For others ideology, deontology, or nature.

Whereas, in a No God world, I argue that individual moral convictions are rooted existentially -- subjectively -- in dasein. Out in a particular world historically, culturally, socially, political and economically. Understood individually given how each of us accumulates a uniquely personal set of experiences, relationships and access to information and knowledge. In a world that is ever evolving in a swirl of contingency, chance and change.

Don't want to take your own moral convictions there given a particular context? Well, that's your prerogative, of course.

iambiguous wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 7:13 pm

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 4:19 amI see. It seems to me that based on all of that, your definition or at least understanding of dasein is encapsulated as: "The full context of a human being's existence, which colours that being's perceptions and, more importantly, values".

No, my point is that whatever "here and now" I construe to be the "full context" of my own existence is still embedded in "the gap" between "I" and "all there is". I am still no less an "infinitesimally insignificant speck of existence in the staggering vastness of all there is".

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 2:41 amOh. Well, then, I still don't particularly understand what you mean by "dasein". If you could provide a succinct definitional statement such as mine which you've quoted above, that might help me to better get it.

Once again:

I encompassed what I mean by dasein in the OPs of these two threads in particular:

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382

You will either be willing to read them, to ponder them...and then come back here and given a particular set of circumstances explore our respective moral philosophies or you won't.

Belinda wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 12:55 pm

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 12:13 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 12:07 pm

That is true of the way the English treated the Boers in South Africa, allegedly as bad as Hitler's concentration camps.
An atypical physical appearance ,either natural or deliberately contrived, is often taken to be a sign of ingroups and outgroups. Not long ago simple people were sometimes actually afraid of a person who in their limited experience looked different. However this was not always the case . When the first English settlers arrived in America they were useless at getting themselves fed among the virgin forests , and the local people who had not previously seen such odd people, helped them to survive. The local indigenous people must have had very strong laws of hospitality.

And it would be hard to beat the way the English treated the Irish. Starved them out of their own country and populated it with English and Scots to undermine and outnumber the indigenous people. That's why 'Northern Ireland' exists. Deliberate genocide.

True. And also true is politicians to get power for themselves use people's fears. The native Irish were to be used by Cromwell as compliant underlings.

Today we see see similar tactics by right wing politicians to make all foreign immigrants seem like the main danger to the nation, when the real danger is Right wing efforts to make all of us compliant with the greed of the elite political class.

And today wokies would call the Irish 'racist' for objecting to their country being flooded with royalist Scots and English. Or would they? Wokies are masters at hypocrisy and the double standard. It would probably confuse them terribly and they wouldn't know which moral high ground to take.

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 5:53 pm
And today wokies would call the Irish 'racist' for objecting to their country being flooded with royalist Scots and English. Or would they? Wokies are masters at hypocrisy and the double standard. It would probably confuse them terribly and they wouldn't know which moral high ground to take.

From dictionary.com

wokeism:
Usually Disparaging. promotion of liberal progressive ideology and policy as an expression of sensitivity to systemic injustices and prejudices:
She worked for nearly a decade at the university before she finally tired of the influence of wokeism.
“The only religion allowed around here is wokeism,” he complained.

Okay, but is there or is there not the conservative equivalent of this? Liberals go after those who don't think like they do about race or gender or sexual orientation or abortion or capital punishment or gun control or religion. What, and conservatives don't in turn insist that in order to be truly "awake", others are obligated to think as they do? There's not a right-wing rendition of "politically correct"?

Aren't the moral and political and religious objectivists here often fanatically "woke"? You think like they do or you are stupidly sound asleep to reality.